Greenhorn
Elizabeth Moon
I. The Dude
Josiah Horatio Titweiler arrived at Wichita Station in Open Range wearing a mask. That was the first problem. It wasn’t in period; it was a modern, non-western, rebreathing mask with little doohickeys on the sides. He said he had allergies.
His horse was the next problem. Yes, a range-riding, rock-herding rancher had to have a horse. Bio or mechanical or whatever…it had to be vaguely horse-shaped, of a horselike color, and it had to have its name painted on the front. Black, with or without white trim, was good. Pink and silver was not. Tan with white trim was good. Green with blue spots was not. As for names, Silver was good. Aluminum was not. Trigger was good. Barrel was not.
Titweiler did not understand the underlying logic, and it was not something he could ask anyone at the factory building his custom horse. He decided he would go with “laughable” to undermine suspicion. After all, one of the tropes in the books and vids was the idiot who wasn’t an idiot, who gained respect by proving it and then was trusted and befriended.
His horse slid out of the freighter’s belly looking like any other Tesper 1700 except for being painted in a swirling pattern of turquoise and lavender. The swirling pattern also concealed the custom modifications for Titweiler’s unusual anatomy and need for firepower. The cartoon horse on the nose with the name Sunnydancing in curly letters around it was bright purple. Big green eyes. Sparkling silver hooves, mane, and tail.
In his carefully tailored suit, Titweiler knew he stood out among the other passengers claiming their belongings: they wore work clothes, rumpled and stained, and their horses being unloaded included only two Tespers—both older models—and a dozen mixed of Gorins, Pedins, and Dolloks in various shades of brown and rough-patched scars. All with realistic horses painted on their noses in black, some shade of brown, or tan with black trim. Names like Buckshot, Bullet, Lightning, Stormy.
Eyes stared at him, looked at each other, nodded, looked again at the shiny and obviously new Sunnydancing and back to him. Sizing him up. Sizing the horse up as she sat unscarred on the pad. The clerk at the desk called, “Titweiler! Josiah Horatio Titweiler!” He stepped forward, careful to walk neatly to the counter, and there receive the keys to Sunnydancing. “You want we should have that thing moved around to launch for you?” The woman’s eyes were laughing.
“I have a certificate,” he said, pulling out the case and showing it. “But perhaps it would be better—it is crowded here. I’ll be staying at the Grande Lodge.”
“That’ll be two hundred for a tow,” she said. “Seventy-five for a bounce.”
“Tow, please,” he said. The choice of someone who did not want his horse scratched up by the other rough mounts. The choice of someone who might have a piloting certificate but wasn’t that skilled. She entered the order, and his card, with the corner of her mouth puckered tight to hide a smile.
He walked back past the others and had just reached the compartment hatch when one of them said “You call that a horse, mister?”
He turned and smiled, keeping his lips down over his store-bought teeth. “That is what the catalog called it.”
Various sounds reached him he assumed were humorous at his expense. Excellent. Everything was going according to plan. From behind him he heard “—bought a horse from a catalog! Can you believe—” and then the hatch shut, and he was moving swiftly along the passage to “lodging.”
The Grande Lodge had fake log walls; every fake window had videos of mountain vistas. The bar boasted both a bucking bull ride and a bucking rockethorse ride, though both were unoccupied when Titweiler entered, an hour after checking into his room. A few cowboy types slouched in booths around the sides, vacuum suits hung on foot-long pegs and jeans tucked into their boots. Plenty of time for some of the locals who’d seen Sunnydancing arrive to show up here.
“Well, if it isn’t that fellow from the landing bay,” one of them said loudly. “Hear about him? He bought a horse from a catalog!”
“No!”
“He did. Purty thing, too, if you like something that belongs in a little girl’s bedroom.” He looked at Titweiler. “Hey, whyn’t you show us how you can ride on that’n over there?”
“Uh…no thanks. I just came in for a lemon soda. Say, do you know how I can find the Ranch Exchange?”
“He wants the Ranch Exchange…imagine that.”
“What ya gonna do, buy a ranch, sonny?”
“Actually I…I have one.” Titweiler smiled at them, and they didn’t flinch, so he was doing it right.
“You? Have a ranch? Where is it?”
“Whatcha gonna do with it?”
“I’m going to herd…um…boulders.” He sipped his lemon soda.
“He’s going to herd boulders!” one said to another, loudly, and then, “You gonna herd boulders with that fancy-pants little pony you brought in?”
“They said it would do everything I needed,” Titweiler said, spreading his hands carefully. Only five tentacles…er…fingers on each. “I won it,” he said. A half truth, as it happened. “The ranch, not my, uh, horse.”
“And you got a license to fly…yanno, sonny, you oughta join up with the Big C.”
“Is that near the Ranch Exchange?”
Hoots and grunts, quickly suppressed. “Where’s your ranch?”
“I—I am not certain until I’ve been to the Ranch Exchange. It was the lottery, you see. The angles were given, and the range stated to be unencumbered, but I was told I’d get the coordinates after checking in with the exchange.”
Glances exchanged again among the other men. One of them stood up. “How ’bout I show you just where it is, so you don’t get lost. This is your first time on a big station, isn’t it? The gravity shifts can get to you, ’til you’re used to them.” The man—tall for a man, he could tell—looked him up and down. “How far in you come from?”
“Mars,” he said. “I worked for Allied Metals, in the accounting department, and there was this lottery—”
“Sure, sure, we know about lotteries. You got any duds but that suit? Not too comfortable to ride in, is it?”
“It is not, to be honest, but I have the right…um…outfit. Jeans, boots—”
“Good vacuum suit? Gotta have a good vacuum suit.”
“Oh, yes. I asked Tesper when I ordered Sunnydancing, and they directed me to a catalog that had complete outfitting for the aspiring rancher.”
The others had stood up by now, and he had five new friends, or the local syndicate equivalent, who escorted him to the Ranch Exchange. They waited in the front lounge, chatting with a woman with bleached hair and a fringed skirt who had greeted them with, “Why aren’t you boys out on the range?” while a more subdued clerk ushered him into the back room for New Properties. There, Titweiler handed over the packet he’d obtained from the former Titweiler, who really had been an accountant with Allied Metals, and in return was given a pair of saddlebags. In one were the deeds to his ranch and the code to signal the boundary beacons that he was legit. In the other were books on local regulations and communication codes he might need.
“It’s a repo,” the man behind the desk said. “That’s mostly what lotteries offer, is repos. But the guy who had it was a claim jumper, and he didn’t really herd his own; he was all the time sneakin’ in on other folks and rustlin’ their rocks. So he didn’t have it long, and before that it was in legal limbo until they found the heirs of the guy before that, and none of them wanted it. Nor anyone else for awhile. It’s farther out than most want, so aside from claim jumpers—and they mostly stay in close so they can sell and run—it scans as nicely populated with Class III to V types, and they’re small enough to herd easy. You got your horse yet?”
“Yes. A Tesper 1700, new. And my certificate.”
“A new horse? You are aware new horses attract thieves—?”
“Surely not here? Isn’t there a marshal here?” It had been in his briefing: Wichita had a law officer, called a marshal, named Bart Manley.
“The marshal’s office is back on Main. You’d better register your horse right away.”
Titweiler noticed that two of his new friends found a reason not to come along to the marshal’s office, but the others did, having endorsed the Ranch Exchange’s warning about horse thieves. “Sunnydancing is not a common color,” Titweiler said. “That would make her hard to steal, wouldn’t it?”
“Nothing a kill pen couldn’t get rid of in an hour or less,” said the one called Slim, who was not. “You get your mount registered and chipped—official chip, o’ course—and frankly you oughta add in a custom chip only you know the code for.”
Titweiler nodded, though he knew Sunnydancing already had custom chips with many more functions than just proving his ownership. But time enough for that later. His game was more complex than these simple cowhands could guess. Up ahead he spotted the marshal’s office with a gold-lettered sign in the window: Open Range, Wichita Territory, Marshal Office.
Marshal Manley, slouching back in an old-fashioned banker’s chair, was paunchy, age-wrinkled, and garrulous. More important, he seemed helpfully unsuspicious, handing over a tracking chip for Sunnydancing immediately. Clearly a third-rate lawman at best, Titweiler thought, though something about the man tickled his instincts.
Back at the Lodge, Titweiler changed into his ranch clothes: snug jeans, plaid shirt, vest, leather jacket heavily fringed, glittering stones edging the pockets and cuffs, and cowboy boots elaborately patterned with turquoise, purple, and black leather. With his vacuum suit over his arm, he checked out and went to get Sunnydancing out of the corral where all the guests’ rockethorses were kept. His new friends came with him, to help carry his luggage, they said, and they headed off with it. Then he stepped into his vacuum suit, custom-made back home though designed to look the same as others, and hitched it at his waist. He wanted his fringed jacket to show as he walked down to the corral.
When he went through into the Customer Waiting Lounge, his friends all pinched their mouths against smiles and nodded. “Lookin’ good. We got your luggage loaded on that mule.” The mule was nothing but a trailer all sealed up, its towline coiled in front.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m all set now—”
But the corral attendant disagreed. “Bein’ as you’re a new customer, we want to be sure you’re actually safe to ride through our nearspace on that overpowered horse you got there. We require every new customer to take a riding test on our equipment.”
“But Sunnydancing is a custom—”
“I know that. But it’s the rule. Now we got a nice, safe arena, guaranteed to contain any mistakes, where you can take Old Smokey and show us you know how to handle a horse. A circle or two, a figure eight, stop, back him up, walk back to the start. Simple. Otherwise, it’s eight thousand to tow you out to your ranch, plus another four thousand if you’re one of the outliers, which Ranch Exchange says you are.”
So it was here and now, the test of riding. He glanced at the others. They’d known. Slim nodded at him. “You’ll be fine, Titsy, it’s just Old Smokey. Remember what they told you in your flight training.”
“He can be a bit cranky; you really have to get after him to get him moving, but then he wakes up,” Tiny added. Tiny, who overtopped him by a handbreadth.
“Fine, then,” he said. “I want to get home as quick as I can. Let’s get this over with.” He pulled his vacuum suit up all the way, easing the helmet over his head, and sealed up.
Smokey certainly looked old; a dark gray covered with dents and streaks of something that might be corrosion; the control bubble with its saddle had scratches and streaks on the inside. Titweilder climbed up from the mounting block, patting the dirty skin with one glove as if this were a live horse. In the headphones he heard what might’ve been a suppressed chuckle.
Once in the saddle, Titweiler ran through the checklist: power, steering, controls, electrical faults, gravity stability, while in Preflight Mode. The long neck extended and retracted, the head went up and down, rotated sideways. The grippers opened and shut. Landing legs moved, joints worked as designed. The little control bubble smelled faintly of something nasty, but his own sensors detected nothing actually toxic. Titweiler slid his customized control pod out of its holster and held it in the two lateral tentacles of one hand, with the other four on the throttle. He held the other hand up, visible proof he wasn’t grabbing leather. “Ready,” he said, to the corral attendant, and the man grinned and switched the horse to Flight Mode.
There was a moment of stillness. Titweiler pushed the throttle forward to “walk.” A grinding noise, a slight shift to the left, a jerk forward maybe a meter, and then Smokey reared up, the long neck swinging back over the cab and the rear legs shooting forward. Classic trick. Titweiler countered easily, his legs gripping the seat as Smokey turned upside down and then rotated its rear legs to push off against the arena fence. Meanwhile, Titweiler’s other lateral tentacles sank into the control panel, sending codes that modified the horse’s programmed bucking pattern. Smokey shuddered to a jerky halt, drifting across the arena.
Now all he had to do was analyze—
An electric shock broke his contact with the seat, and Smokey rolled sharply right. Titweiler shoved his toes out the ends of his custom boots, both leather and vacuum suit, and his sucker pads clung to the cab deck. The rockethorse bucked wildly, changing its pattern repeatedly as his lateral tentacles sent code after code deep into its system.
He took what would have been bruises for a human from the inside of the cab, but his sucker pods held, and eventually he had control of the yaw and was able to damp the acceleration in the vertical—that bouncing up and down had put his head on the canopy more than once. He had that down to short jerky movements, and the horizontal whirl down to mere twitches. Now he moved Smokey around the arena, almost level, controlling the pitch axis to a canter-like rocking movement, first in big circles, then a figure of 8, a full stop in the middle, then backing up, then going to the docking tube, lining up with the mounting block, and holding it still. He put Smokey back in Docking Mode, retracted his tentacles back into his boots and his left glove, and called in. “Well?”
“I never saw anything like it,” the corral attendant said. “You got Old Smoky acting like a show pony in under a minute. How’d you do that?”
“I rode a lot of sims,” he said, which was true.
“Well, mister, you can take your Sunnydancing any time you want. Come on back through when you’re ready.”
Titweiler checked that all his tentacles were now imitating human digits again, and the toes of his vacuum suit boots had properly resealed, then opened the canopy and climbed down to the mounting station, patting Old Smokey as if thanking him for a good time, simultaneously retrieving nanites he’d put on when he mounted. Then back through the tube, into the Customer Waiting Lounge, where several screens were replaying his ride over and over for others. His erstwhile friends insisted on buying him a drink from the Lounge bar, and he insisted on buying a round for them, and they gave him a new cowboy nickname, Buck, before he hitched the mule to Sunnydancing, mounted up, and rode off into the darkness, there being no sunset within many, many millions of kilometers.
II. Home on the Range
Sunnydancing proved as easy to handle as the manufacturer had promised, and Titweiler reviewed his mission profile, then sent an update to his supervisor. He was certain, he said, that he would soon be provided with informants, after which he expected to retrieve the fugitives he’d been sent for. Having spiked their drinks with a neurochemical binder, his new cowboy buddies Tiny and Slim would be following the chemical trail he left for them. Easy to handle, these humans.
His first boundary beacon signaled: from here, the directions to his ranch house were clear, and he told Sunnydancer to “take us home, old pal,” a line from some long-gone western adventure story he’d liked. He pinged the house to start warming up while he was still fourteen human hours out. The dwelling, like most such, had few rooms or amenities but was supposed to boast a converter unit and fully stocked oxygen and water tanks, as well as heat, according to the lottery’s inspection. When he came in sight of the irregular blob, he felt almost smug.
He put Sunnydancer into the small corral without difficulty, winched in the mule, and used Sunnydancer’s head to push the mule through into the entrance tunnel. Then he shut Sunnydancer down, clambered out, hooked the power cable to the ranch house output line to recharge the powerbank, and prepared to enter his own domain.
The airlock codes worked; he moved his luggage from the mule’s pack into the lock and cycled through. Yes, it was aired up and yes, it was above the freezing point of water, though not much. Artificial gravity gave him a definite vertical reference in the darkness. He found the control panel right beside the airlock, turned on the lights, and saw the half sphere, perhaps seventy meters across and thirty-five meters high, the floor a smooth composite over the other half of the sphere; under it would be the water storage, gas tanks, and machinery that kept the habitat livable. To his right was the end of the small building, the core of his ranch house, perhaps four meters by six. He dragged his luggage over to the door and pushed it open. In here it was warmer, and all the numbers were green on the house screen, so he opened his helmet.
This was home on the range until his mission was complete. The furniture included a simple bed against one side wall, a square table, and four chairs. He got out of his vacuum suit, put it in the recharge closet, unpacked his largest suitcase, and stripped out of his cowboy outfit, then the shaper he wore in human form, and pulled on the soft, voluminous krrm he’d have worn back home. As his body softened, reshaped to the krrm, reconnected to its neural net, he felt better. Relaxed. He investigated the recycling alcove, the food storage—to his surprise, half full of human food—and the water storage, full. The scans were on, automatic with his command for the power to come on and warm the place up. He could see his range, all the beacons winking the code for “owner in residence,” and also the colored lines of rockethorses moving beyond his boundaries. Nothing within them. One very distant faster blink that meant something—someone—was headed his way, but a long way out.
Tiny and Slim, probably.
Then he stepped outside, into the dimmer light of the hollow sphere, and went through restorative exercises as he could not have while in human-occupied spaces. With the krrm expanded, he could reach within a few centimeters of the ceiling; shifting in another dimension he could stretch sideways to touch both sides. He stroked each tentacle with two others—outward, then inward. The krrm shifted from rock-colored camouflage to the soft shades of early excitation, a little brighter with each tentacle receiving attention. Faster…ripples of color moved across the krrm as ripples of sensation flowed through his body.
But no. Not all the way, not now. He had no time for the aftermath of conjugation, when they would lie motionless as the cells joined, divided, divided again. He went back inside, and, regretfully and with respect and affection, peeled back his krrm, explaining the reasoning. His krrm accepted it, released its connectors all the way, and he rolled it carefully into something that could pass for a folded bedcover before laying it carefully on his bed.
By the time Slim and Tiny arrived, he had eaten, slept, organized all his clothes and tools, and attached his larger portable corral to Sunnydancing’s harness, with the mule hitched for easy pull-out. Then, dressed in appropriate garb, he backed Sunnydancing into the corral, along with the mule, hitched the mule to the center post, and checked his appearance one more time before riding out to show he was actively ranching. Sunnydancing rocked along at an easy pace. He tried deploying the corral as if he’d seen something to catch; it flipped open as advertised, but instead of folding neatly on the way back, it made an unsightly mess. He kept an eye on the scans, and let them know he’d spotted them by rotating Sunnydancer’s spotlight, the accepted “Hiya” wave. But there were three of them, not two. Was this a raid, instead?
He hailed them. “Hey, Tiny! Slim! You brought a friend along?”
“An’ our own food supply,” Slim said. “Marshal wanted to make sure you were all right out here. We thought we’d stay a few days, help you with that new corral in case it got sticky. Sometimes it takes them a few catches to loosen up.”
“Very kind of you,” he said, thinking something else entirely. The marshal? Why was the marshal here? “It is being a bit difficult.”
One of them accelerated and came nearer. “I see—what you need to do is swing your horse’s neck toward that tangle and use your grabbers to get hold of a piece. Want me to show you?”
“I’ll try,” Titweiler said, working the controls. Sunnydancer’s neck rotated leftward, and Titweiler extended the grabbers.
“Just like that,” Tiny said. “Good job. If you don’t have your mag screen on, do that now.”
He did have his mag screen on, so he saw a closer view of the grabbers approaching a frame member of the corral and then closing around it.
“Now move your horse’s neck the other way, not too fast. I’m going to grab onto a piece on this end. When it’s open enough, we can refold it nice and tight. Yes, like that. Easier with a helper, the first few times, but the joints work smoother later.”
He had to ask them in, of course. They’d brought a glowstone pot and some steaks, sausages, loaves of bread, as well as plenty of beer and wine, which he didn’t plan to drink. They used the sanitary, commented that when he brought his herd to Wichita to sell, he’d probably want to get some furnishings to fancy his place up a bit. Even enlarge the cabin, if he’d been lucky.
“But we’re fine like this,” Tiny said, looming over him, a can of beer in one hand and a huge sausage wrap in the other. “I got my bedroll—we all do—you just go on inside when you feel like it. We can make an early start tomorrow, get your corral thing all ironed out and workin’ easy, and help you get your first roundup started.”
He admitted to being a bit tired; he’d eaten the steak grilled over the glowstones, and it didn’t entirely agree with him. He’d avoided the alcohol and went into the house while they were still chatting and drinking by the glowing stones, leaning on their bedrolls.
In bed, he felt the krrm nudging against his feet, wanting to join again. He dared not change now, with humans going in and out to use the sanitary. Finally, they settled down, and he slept, only to wake when someone sat on the bed.
“We need to talk.”
Titweiler opened his eyes, reminded his lower tentacles to go back to foot shape, and said “What?” before he realized the marshal had the krrm laid over his lap and was stroking it. He jerked a little; he couldn’t help it.
“I know what this is,” the marshal said, his big meaty hand gliding across the velvety surface. “Those boys outside don’t; they thought it was some fancy quilt. But I do. Which means I know what you are, because these aren’t bedclothes. You’re a Gordaunt.”
That isn’t what we call ourselves, Titweiler thought and then remembered who did call them Gordaunts. “Skassant?” Enemies of his people for eons. He had to let his people know. Skassants weren’t supposed to be in this system.
The marshal nodded. “Thought you were smart. And I’m a lawman in both jurisdictions—and that’s what we need to talk about. You’re the fifth Gordaunt I’ve spotted out here. Same gang?”
Titweiler shook his head. “No. Not a gang.”
“Spy?”
“No. Not exactly. I’m with the…you won’t know the name, but it’s essentially a division of enforcement. I have ID. Let me take the krrm.”
The marshal handed it over. Titweiler slid his hand under, to the control, and spoke gently; a fold opened and released an ovoid into his hand. He brought it out on his opened hand, and touched it with the tip of a finger that now looked more like a tentacle. “This opens the file,” he said.
“That’s your badge?”
“That’s my ID, authorization for assignment, but not the assignment itself.”
The ovoid glowed, split in half, and opened to form a small screen divided by a blue line. On one side, Titweiler as he looked on the human ID he’d showed at Wichita Station: slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sallow skin. His cover name, his height, and an entirely false story of his origin and employment on Mars. On the other, himself at home, robed in his krrm, the ovoid on his upper stalk where the krrm was, for the image, open. There was writing, but in the wrong script; Titweiler touched the device again, and the writing morphed to English.
“Special Agent,” the Marshal said. “Important, then. I don’t suppose you want to tell me your mission.”
“Certainly,” Titweiler said. “I am sent to find and, um, deal with fugitives of ours, before the humans discover them, if possible. They are evading our laws and causing trouble here; they are, I was told, stealing from other ranchers.”
“The Big C gang?”
“So my supervisor told me.”
“It’s not them. The Big C are just vigilantes who think they don’t need a marshal, that they can uphold law and order by themselves.” He smiled. “I let them think they’re getting away with it.”
“But you don’t,” Titweiler said, thinking hard.
The marshal shrugged. “Thing is, frontiers attract the lawbreakers, son. Had to decide if you were one of them or one of us. So it’s a good thing your krrm kept your badge for you.”
And that our peoples haven’t declared war again. Yet. Titweiler nodded. “Happy to be able to satisfy you,” he said.
“You don’t need to worry about your fugitives; they won’t bother anybody again.” The marshal stroked the krrm again. “So soft,” he said. “Is it true this is your mate?” He grabbed a double handful of the krrm, stood, and flung it at Titweiler. “Show me. Alien sex turns me on—”
Titweiler reacted instinctively, stretching an upper tentacle under the flung krrm; the neural mesh connected, and the krrm whipped around over his head and settled on the marshal. It’s not really edible, he thought at it, but the krrm’s reaction flooded him with stimulant as the krrm made its way through the faux human façade and the Skassant reality.
Absorption…elimination…the toxics of two species lay in an untidy pile on the floor.
Well, the chemical sanitary will take care of that. He rose from the bed, no longer tired at all, and swept up the debris. One thing remained: the marshal’s badge. It too could go in the sanitary, but maybe…maybe it could be useful.
Slim and Tiny, though…he peeked out the door. Snoring still. The krrm fluttered closer, its soft upper surface beginning to show colors even without the joining. Clearly it was approaching peak fertility, but he could not leave two aliens within his home when he would be immobile for hours after. He touched the krrm and forced his will onto it.
“Just this much—they’re already drunk—keep them asleep until I wake.” The krrm released two patches, and he put one on each sleeper. Back in the house he turned off the lights.
Too long since he had joined and propagated. In his native form, he lifted the krrm and slid it over him. Its glow brightened and began to move up and down his tentacles, teasing, demanding. He reached out, curled up, his stalk broadening and lengthening as the krrm and he danced. When all the eggs were laid, and sealed safely away, when the delights of the dance had peaked again and again, the krrm stretched them both out on the floor, and they did not move for a long time.
III. Roundup
Chill air woke him as the krrm slid away and rolled itself up. Titweiler wavered toward the bed, and pulled the shaper from under it. Getting the right tentacles into the right opening of the shaper took several tries, and once he’d returned to human shape, he discovered that the eggs he now carried made his jeans far too tight. He hadn’t expected to be nursing eggs. He tried adjusting the shaper, but his own internal anatomy was unforgiving. Eggs belonged where they belonged, and he could not shift them much at all. Both his pairs of jeans were the same size, and both had fit his former shape snugly, as he’d read cowboys’ jeans should. He faced the possibility that he would have to kill the two cowboys to keep his secret, but they had helped him. It was beyond discourteous. Absolutely against the protocols and his mandate. He would lose points with his service unless there was another reason to kill them. But they must not know what he really was.
He pulled the jeans off and looked at them. If he’d considered the possibility of reproduction, he’d have chosen a cowgirl disguise and worn a skirt. He looked at the jeans, now stuck partway up his thighs. If he cut open the seams of both pairs, and patched in extra material, would they fit then? It would take a lot of work, and the cowboys would certainly notice bulges in his supposed thighs. Well, could he make a skirt that would fit over his egg sacs?
First things first: he checked on the cowboys. Still sleeping peacefully, as expected. Perhaps under the krrm’s influence, or not, they had rolled closer together and now were almost wrapped in each other, sharing the blankets.
Then, with the shaper’s help, he got into the space suit, and went out to deal with the marshal’s horse. It would be a Skassant-operating system, though it looked like a human design—a pretty yellow with cream trim and a rearing horse on its front named Justice. He had been briefed on such things. He used the marshal’s keys, and then his own nanites and tentacles to reprogram it for a complicated but ultimately fatal course. He made it to the airlock again before it took off, its triple exhausts glowing blue.
The skirt, when he finished with it, covered his fake legs adequately, and had a split so he could get into the space suit and sit in the saddle easily. He pulled up a picture of a human woman and stared at it long enough to morph his skin into growing longer hair, this time curly, and produce a few additional bulges that made his shirt a bit too tight. He picked up the krrm and put it back on the bed, reminding it not to move in front of the humans, then set about making breakfast for them. Pancake mix, dried milk, dried eggs, oil, water…and as the first pancakes sizzled on the griddle, he went out, removed the patches, turned up the lights, and waited.
When they came in, following the smell of pancakes, butter, and reconstituted syrup, they stared at him. “What the—?”
He smiled at them. “I know you thought I was kind of…you know…”
“But—but you rode Old Smokey!”
“What, you don’t think girls can ride?”
“No, of course not, but why—”
“The lottery. It was for men only.” He smiled again. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay for the roundup, boys. But I’d like it if you did.”
In another hour, they were all mounted; he led them off with Sunnydancing bucking a little so he could prove “she” could ride a rockethorse, and by what counted as sundown, they had a good forty rocks rounded up and were pushing them back to the holding corral at the ranch. The next day, as he caught on to the nuances of herding rocks, they brought in more than a hundred.
Back at the ranch, he was just starting supper for them, for he understood that with a woman on the ranch, the cowboys wouldn’t cook even so much as a steak themselves, when they drew on him.
“Was my cooking that bad?” Titweiler asked, facing the replica .45s, a stupid choice in a rock hemisphere, unless they really used lasers. He roused the krrm across the room.
“We have to kill you,” Slim said. “You know too much.”
“Know what?” Titweiler said. The two men glared at him.
“You know what! We saw you looking.”
“I don’t,” Titweiler said. “I don’t understand.” What he did understand was that if they attacked him, he could kill them legally. Why did they stand there talking?
“You’re really a woman, so you know—women have intuition about these things.”
And he couldn’t kill them until they made the first move, it was in the protocols. Killing out of protocols meant stacks of paperwork. Why wouldn’t they get on with it?
“You saw us. Lying together.”
He shrugged. They’d done it every night. “So? That’s your secret? What’s wrong with that?”
Their voices tangled, eager to explain. “We’re not supposed to—”
“But everybody knows, really, it’s that it’s never supposed to be seen, and you—”
“You could tell and we’d be kicked out—”
“Sent to that other colony—”
“They’re like us only they don’t like horses, they just like arty stuff.”
“See, Open Range has a strict period-realism rule, and back then, the Old West on Earth, it wasn’t legal.”
“So to be us, we have to pretend it’s bad, and you’re a woman and women talk too much, that’s period realism, and so since nobody else knows you’re a woman we can kill you and send you and your horse off somewhere and nobody will know.”
“Women talk too much?” Titweiler raised his brows. Behind them, the krrm had raised itself, trembling with eagerness and effort. He signaled it to wait. Perhaps there was a way to end this without killing them…thus no paperwork. How to explain?
Then he remembered a bit of dialog.
“I am no WOMAN,” he declared as he shed his disguise and appeared, tentacles and all, and lifted the denim skirt to show the egg sacks lining his stalk. He signaled immobilize; the krrm flowed up their backs and brought them down before they could fire. Alive. But weighed down by a pulsating prickly mass with bright blue rings flashing on its upper surface.
“You’re an octopus?” Slim said, eyes wide.
Tiny was staring at the flashing blue rings.
Even a human should know better than that. Titweiler sighed. “No, I am not an octopus. An octopus can’t change into human shape. I’m an alien from another world. That’s my secret. And if others find out, they’ll want to kill me. I’ll keep your secret if you’ll keep mine. If you won’t, my krrm will inject you with its favorite flavor additive and consume whatever parts of you aren’t toxic to us.”
“You’d kill us?”
“You were going to kill me.” Titweiler waited a moment. Slim and Tiny looked at each other then up at him. “Now, I trust you boys will honor a handshake, won’t you?” He gestured to his krrm, and it slid down enough for two human arms to come out. “The deal is, you don’t kill me, I don’t kill you, and we keep each other’s secret forever. Are we pardners or not?” He re-formed his right-side upper tentacles into an arm and hand, four fingers and a thumb, and held it out.
“It’s a deal, pardner!” Tiny said, reaching out.
“Yup, it’s a deal, pardner,” Slim said.
Titweiler shook both hands. “Pardners,” he said, and gestured. His krrm slid away from the two. “Now, tell me what you were really up to.”
“Well…” Tiny looked at Slim and Slim looked back. “We had this deal with the marshal. Drive newcomers off their ranch or kill ’em, and then him and us would divvy up the profit.”
“He knew about us, but said he wouldn’t tell if we’d work for him.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” Titweiler said. “Here’s the deal. You can have my ranch. And—” He bespoke the krrm again, and the marshal’s star dropped on the floor. “One of you can be marshal if you want. He doesn’t need his badge anymore.”
“Really? Where will you be, what’s your cut?”
“I’m going home. I have a family to raise.” He patted the egg sacks. “You boys be good now.”
<scenebreak>
“And that,” Titweiler said to his egglings as they listened in the jelly pool, “is how your krrm and vlln escaped from human space and brought back word of the Skassants’ infiltration.”
The End